It the beginning of the 3D printing 'hype' it was all about printing funny looking phone cases and jewelry, but as time passes, the technique - which, by the way, exists since the 1980's - evolves. We've seen houses being 3D printed earlier this year, and now researchers from Australia have managed to 3D print two jet engines. The benefits of this approach? It could lead to cheaper, lighter and more fuel efficient engines.
This work was done by engineers and researchers at Amaero … [Read more...]

A while back we wrote an article about Airbus and its focus on a 3D printed aviation future. The ideas were astonishing and seemed limitless. Now I stumbled upon a Tedtalk of Bastian Schaefer, who runs this development team, where he explains a bit more about where he thinks the future of aviation is going. You got to love the 3D printing future! … [Read more...]

In our article World’s biggest and fastest 3D printer in the making you can read about Airbus taking a lot of interest in the 3D printing technology. But they are not the only aviation giant looking at the possibilities of 3D printing. Teams across the Boeing enterprise are using 3D printing in a plethora of ways, including fit check models, shop aids, tool mock-ups and visualization models.
“3D printing allows us to model data analysis in an innovative way. Being able to see different levels … [Read more...]

Imagine a spacecraft that could build itself by scavenging materials from space junk or asteroids.
The “SpiderFab” project from Tethers Unlimited Inc. just received $100,000 from NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts project to invest in designing and realizing a self-constrution device that could realize just that using the 3D printing technology. The practical planning and additional funding could lead to the launch of a 3D printing test mission within several years.
The aim of this … [Read more...]

With yesterdays success of NASA’s daring Curiosity landing, we’re one step closer to putting actual humans on this dessert planet. Therefore NASA engineers are testing a next-generation rover designed to support humans when we entually land on Mars. The most interesting part is that this super rover has seventy end-use parts 3D printed with FDM technology.
The rover, about the size of a Hummer and boasting a pressurized cabin to support humans in space, is being put to the test in the Arizona … [Read more...]